My love for brook trout started many years ago when my son caught his first brook trout. It was a beautiful colored trout about 10” long. After carefully removing the hook, we let it go to swim away. I was impressed with its natural beauty. Since then we have fished the higher elevations of the Smoky Mountains Stream for the native trout for many years; and that is not to say that we don’t fish for the larger browns or the colorful rainbows, but we love the brookies.
So it was with great pleasure that I learned of the Aaron Run Recovery which was a project to restore the natural habitat of the brook trout in that stream. Aaron Run is a tributary to the better known historic Savage River in Maryland and it has been ruined by the coal mines in that area. The mines have been closed; however, the acid still leaches into the stream.
To overcome that and compensate for the acidity, crushed limestone is held in silos and dispensed into the river with a doser. The results have been that aquatic grasses have started to grow in 2010 and the brook trout have started to reproduce in the stream. Kudos to the National Fish Habitat Partnership and the Maryland